alessandroIn 2018 a group of Valve staff tried to figure out just how efficient they were being—and found they were making more money per head than Apple, Facebook, and nearly every tech giant out there
echo64What’s the efficiency in taking 30% of almost all game sales on a platform? I know we all love valve, but the efficiency here is having a store that everyone has to use if they want to make sales at all.
Chefdano3Which is exactly what Apple does with their iTunes store.
Yes, it’s all massive profiting, driving the cost of everything up, or putting less money into the hands of the people who make the thing you like.
When I really love a game, it bothers me that valve, or apple, or Google, or Sony, take 1/3rd of the money. They don’t deserve it.
What if you could buy direct from the publisher or developer, but you could only download the game once? Let’s say you could still install it any number of times on any device so long as you had the source file in this scenario. Would you still be willing to pay $60 for a major title?
Would your willingness to buy a game change if you couldn’t get a refund in the above scenario, regardless of time played?
… like a disk or cart? Yes that’s fine. I do that.
Sure, that’s fine for a release that has a physical edition, but many do not.
Also, when buying physical copies I’m guessing that the dev gets an even smaller cut, but it probably depends on the retail location to a large degree.
What percentage of the sales price do you suppose goes towards the outside companies that print the disks and make the packaging?